Bill to Protect Strikers’ Jobs Fails in U.S. Senate : Labor: Supporters fall short of the votes needed to end the filibuster by Republicans.

Organized labor’s supporters in the Senate failed by three votes Tuesday to break a Republican talkathon against a bill to protect the jobs of strikers, killing its chances of passage this Congress.

Backers of the bill restricting companies’ ability to permanently replace strikers picked up two more votes over the weekend but were still short of the 60 needed to end a GOP filibuster that began a week ago. They conceded defeat immediately afterward.

“I accept the fact we’ve lost this round,” said the bill’s author, Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), the bill’s primary author. “But as long as workers continue to lose jobs because of this cruel and unjust striker replacement law, we will continue to fight to change the law.”

Some straddlers who sided with the bill’s opponents in a 55-41 test vote last Thursday voiced interest in a concession by the AFL-CIO to exempt employers who agree to turn contract disputes over to outside arbitrators and abide by their rulings.

But none of them switched their votes in Tuesday’s 57-42 tally. The two new votes for the bill came from Sens. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) and Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.), both supporters all along who were attending the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last week.

Republican Sen. William S. Cohen of Maine, where 2,300 International Paper Co. striking workers were permanently replaced in 1988, said the compromise by Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) is still too pro-union.

But Cohen said he will “not hesitate to vote to change the law in the future” if companies continue to show the “arrogance” that Caterpillar Inc. initially did toward members of the United Auto Worker union in breaking their strike earlier this year with the threat of permanent replacements.

A similar bill was passed by the House last July, but by a margin 39 votes short of the necessary two-thirds needed to override a veto promised by President Bush. Tuesday’s vote in the Senate also showed insufficient strength there to override a veto.

“This was much ado about nothing,” complained Sen. J. James Exon (D-Neb.). “The bill was doomed from the day it was introduced.”

The bill is aimed at reversing what unions complain is a mushrooming trend by employers ever since President Reagan fired 11,400 striking air traffic controllers in 1981 to get rid of unions by lining up replacement workers in advance and provoking a strike.

It would have reversed a 1938 Supreme Court decision saying that employers can hire permanent replacements as long as there are no unfair labor practices involved. Companies could still hire temporary workers to replace strikers under both the bill and Packwood’s measure.

The AFL-CIO last week agreed to the compromise offered by Packwood to establish what he called “quasi-compelled mediation” to head off strikes, and Democrats made it part of their bill over the weekend.